School debate about fertile women being employed

[reallyconfusedmostofthetime]

My child's tutor (YR8) started a class debate about whether women of child bearing age should be employed. Is it unreasonable to think this is sexist and ridiculous?

Maybe there's a split in responses as to which definition of debate people are thinking about?

I feel like there are two - you have something like a parliamentary debate, where the idea is to hash out two opposing ideas and the pros and cons and real numbers and impacts of each and then work out which is the right answer in the end.

Or you have an exercise in argument and critical thinking, which is entirely hypothetical, has no effect on anything at all and is purely an exercise in terms of constructing and researching and choosing arguments (and to make you think).

"Women's rights should never be a debate" makes sense in the context of the first one, but less so in the second. I think?

I posted yesterday from the standpoint of an SME in heavy engineering. I am the company secretary, and we have a PT female office manager. We have NEVER in over 30 years of trading received a job application from a woman on the practical money-earning end of the work; we'd definitely take any application seriously though. My female plumber, who has a lot of transferable skills quite fancies a closer look at what we do because it's interesting and challenging, but because she teaches younger females plumbing skills too. There's no HR department, and while we do fund training courses off site, it would probably be an "improve your welding" evening course. Micro businesses do not need and cannot afford employees who do not cover the cost of employing them.

So no women then, as women are always the wrong age.

You do realise men have illnesses.

Owners of SMEs always moan about their lot, but with such a disdain for diversity, they deserve to go bust.

@enchantedsquirrelwood , some of us SMEs are really good at what we do, and many like us are incredibly niche specialist. We have about seven people, and we are among the top suppliers to several big government defence contractors, our itty bitty company is a crucial cog in the wheel. Take us out of the picture and a large part of the navy won't be able to go to sea.

If you've never received an application from a woman, why are you commenting? It doesn't matter. You're sexist but you're not breaking the law, or been able to be morally a twat, because you haven't actually discriminated. You've come back to the thread at least twice to say that you WOULD discriminate given the chance. For some reason.

I assume you just like being able to say you'd be a dick about it. Given the chance. I suppose everyone needs a hobby. The actual question is whether women's basic rights should be a debate in school. Which you haven't bothered to engage with.

Because the rules are really different for the oddities and non-conformist businesses@MrsTerryPratchett . If you don't work in the public sector and are an SME doing anything specialist, then it's par for the course that you can't find maternity cover (because the UK has not trained the people for 30 years since hands-on 15 year olds became apprentices in craft-based trades) so you thrash your main workforce into covering the person on maternity. The people with the skills we need are as rare as hen's teeth. It's not like teaching someone to operate a till or a spreadsheet. There are not many people who can remanufacture a cooling system out of non-ferrous metals, to work 400m underwater in a nuclear submarine, and would you want to trust your life to a system built by the modern equivalent of YTS trainees after four weeks? No, I didn't think so.

It's not being a dick

So why not a debate about giving employers the option to limit maternity leave a la the US?

Unfortunately until they make employing women more affordable, things aren't going to change.

I think that the major barriers at the moment are:

• lack of affordable childcare so often women simply don't return from maternity leave
• help for employers as they can't all afford to employ extra people for when staff go on maternity leave
• make parental leave affordable and normal to take so that men cost closer to the same amount as women are to hire if they have a child to help cut discrimination against women

Maybe a more positive attitude would help. As head of HR in a local company I never had an issue with maternity leave. The company can claim most of the SMP back, if its a small company they can claim over 100% back. I always found it a great way to let people try a new role, so Mary in finance gets a year in a higher paid role, does brilliantly and I've got her lined up for the next vacancy.

You should be able to get funding if you take on an apprentice. I think it is a responsible thing to do, where will your future employees come from if no one bothers to offer apprenticeships?

If everyone thought that way then single women would have to live on benefits until they were no longer fertile.

Very much depends on how it's handled, but I think you should communicate your concern.

Has anyone seen the recent report into behaviour in Scottish schools ? Misogyny is rife and directed at female staff. Very likely to be the case across the UK.

In general, I think 'should a protected group have equal rights?' is a very dodgy choice of topic for younger children such as y8s who are probably pretty unused to debate at all. Imagine it was a pro/anti apartheid debate. The arguments that a pro side would have to present would be racist. Even 'in role' it's a bad idea. The teacher should be weighing up the potential impact on the members of that protected group - the girls. Particularly if there's a dynamic where the boys might carry on airing their debate team views outside the lesson- which at that age seems pretty likely.

I hadn't rtft but you and MrsTerryPratchett clearly had it covered- agree with all of your points.

@Iwasafool , we could get apprentice funding and I keep nagging DH to pursue it, but the silliness is that we are already at full stretch and none of our team have any slack to teach. We'd need an apprentice-master to get them ready (and safe) technically so it wouldn't work unless we took on 10 at a time, and we only have seven employees. We've worked the maths though every which way, and it does not work.

It's the right thing to do though if you want a future workforce. My apprentices did a block at college at the start of their employment so were safe and quickly became useful. Obviously they aren't like an experienced staff member in a few weeks but can still be useful. I think persuading my employer to do it was one of my best achievements and years later some of them are still doing good work at the same company.

And then we'd never get jobs because we'd be Too Old and have no work experience.

And then we all know women over 45 are invisible and overlooked in favour of men in so many workplaces. There are always excuses - older women are past it, have to take more time off to care for family, have gaps on their cv, are just a bit less impressive than the male candidate who is more likely to fit in.

Employing younger, oh and older men is much better really. There are always problems with women employees between the ages of say 15 and 70. 🙄

And Y10 /Y11 is the perfect age to do this with. I'm not a teacher, but they are beginning to think about careers, next steps after GCSE, but also they are starting to be sexually active. So the influences are quite key for ensuring that girls are not distracted from future ambitions. Thank you for doing that.

Then you still would need someone to fills Mary's space. Not many small businesses would have the ability to shuffle a whole load of people around and hire for the missing person and be able to train everyone who are trying new roles all at the same time.

Again I think having a positive attitude is important. I retired earlier this year but I never found it a problem, never had to shuffle whole loads of people around and I wasn't in a small business.

Staff join, staff leave, staff change their roles. It really isn't rocket science and as a manager who did it many times I can tell you it can work really well.

I would complain. Do they also plan to debate whether black children should be allowed to attend the same schools as white children or whether women should have their own bank accounts?!

Having debates - fine. Having debates about topics solidly grounded in misogyny- not fine. If you’re teaching kids how to form arguments there needs to actually be an argument to both sides.

It isn't so long ago that teachers had to resign if they married.
It is also true that maternity leave really messes up timetabling.

There is certainly plenty of material for debate.

It totally depends on how the debate is being run and what the teacher's motivations are.

As a general rule I think there are very few things which should be beyond debate.

I don't think people should be allowed to debate things such as whether the Holocaust really happened, for example.

But I tend to find that debating a really stupid position is useful because it holds that position up to the light. There's no way an argument that women of childbearing age should not be employed is going to hold water. So debate away and let children see how stupid and sexist it is!

And so many other stupid sexist things to be used in the argument. Some of you sound a bit like TRAs - no debate allowed. But is only by debate that the reality and stupidity of sexism can be revealed. Why were there quotas for girls in the old 11 plus passes? Why did the Bronte sisters adopt male pseudonyms?Why did the elderly British lady who had been someone important in NASA tell Oxbridge where to get off?

Complain to your MP too, definitely. And then realise that debating contentious topics can be a good thing when managed appropriately.